Eames Gets To Drive
by Nonchey Niente
Summary: A rework of the original two chapters of Curiosity. Goren's a mess after 'Untethered'. But has anyone thought to check in with Eames? Maybe she is the one who needs to get it out of her system, after all ...
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** I make no claim whatsoever over the original versions of these characters or the events referred to ... bla bla, bla de bla ... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

_"With everything in Goren's life a real mess following the events of 'Untethered', I wondered if anyone has bothered to check in with Eames? My premise is simple - maybe it is Eames who needs to get it out of her system."_

This is a re-work of the story originally called "Curiosity" which I put up on far too quickly and which was a bit of a mess. I have put things in their correct order now and feel it is a bit simpler to follow. Er ... I hope.

This story is designed to try and appease shippers and non-shippers alike, by presenting a situation that could be interpreted as shippy or not, however you please, and which leaves the way wide open for ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING to happen next.

**Mercy Hospital, NYC. 14 hours after Goren's release from Tates Corrections**

**GOREN**: - _No_, Mom. Not yet, please. It's too early.

- Mom, leave it will you? I'm still asleep!

- I don' wanna. Let Frankie do it.

- OK. I'll get up. In a minute. In a minute, I said!

It's not anything like what I usually call 'waking up'. It's more like clambering up out of some kind of pit - a coal mining tunnel? A ventilator shaft? An elevator? Something like that. Orpheus stumbling out of Hades. Must not look back! I'm climbing up but it's hard going because ... because I hurt. I can't say for sure which bit of me hurts, because it seems to be all of me. There's no distinction. It's global. Universal. All over. And there's no Persephone.

Open eyes. Eyes, open. Sesa -me. Open. Come ON.

Oh. I think I am in a hospital. I hope I am in a hospital.

Yes - there's an IV bag hanging over me. It's clear fluid. So does that mean I didn't bleed too much ... saline? Antibiotics?

Eames! I might have guessed. I - I want to talk to you. I can't. I want to smile. No. Can't do that yet, either.

She gives me some water. Could have done with you around when I ... when was it? Yesterday? Last week?

"Eames - you .. you look like crap!"

The effort to say that exhausts me but I really needed to say it. She did it to me that time I was waiting for her in the hospital. I think she was trying to get me to crack a smile - I'm never sure with Eames - but she was right, I did look pretty bad.

So does she, now. If her features are a reflection of my present condition then I'm pleased not to see myself. Her mouth has that tight look and she keeps hiding her face behind her hair.

Now she stares at me. Not at my face. She's looking at my arms. I hold one up; wish I hadn't now. The restraints left ... reminders. I don't want to remember. I'll deal with that later.

Exercise in self-control: Can I keep the horror off my face? I can't let her see me like this. Is this what it is like to be raped? To be utterly helpless at the behest of another human being?

I feel ashamed. I fold my arm with its glaring evidence of my ordeal back down under the cover and turn my head away. I'll think that through later. Everything is an effort. One thing at a time, please.

I've faced death before but always on my own terms. This time was different because I wasn't in control of any element of it. I was chemically emasculated and then physically compromised.

I keep thinking about my Mom.

**EAMES**: I look in on him every 15 minutes or so, long after Ross has given up and caught a ride home. Fuelled by terrible vending machine coffee, I sit on a chair by the side of his bed and watch.

You can see all ages of a man in his face when he is asleep. The muscles in the face and jaw all relax. The features become soft and malleable. It becomes a simple feat of imagination to see him as a child, as a teenager, as a young man, as a grizzled veteran on his death bed. They are all there now in his face.

Just before he wakes up, he dreams. His brows knit together and flicker apart again. His nostrils flare. After a moment of stillness, he finally wakes up.

Poor man. The first thing he sees, is me. He licks his lips. There is a saline IV snaking under the blanket into his arm, but I don't suppose he has had enough water through the normal channels. I help tilt his head up and let him sip from a beaker.

Physically I have always had a hint of curiosity about him. Yeah, I'll admit to that. It's not unnatural, when you work close with someone for a long time. Mentally of course I think I know all I need to about how he works, but physically he remains a mystery. I suspect he feels the same way about me. We've been through all sorts of things together, from my pregnancy to his depression. But always at a distance. So ... so, I am still curious I guess.

When he can talk, he says "You look like crap, Eames." Even tries to smile. Idiot. He pulls the covers down to inspect the IV drip; doesn't like it. I see he has wheals on his wrists and he notices them too. Likes that even less, I guess. His face is unreadable as he examines the damaged skin, which is reddened and angry.

He recovers quite quickly, and leaves the hospital after less than 24 hours. But jumps straight out of the frying pan and into the fire.

He pulls me in with him, of course.

**Times Square, NYC, 11.37pm**

**EAMES:**After three times of trying, he finally answers my call. "Where are you?"

A long pause. "Times Square."

"Stay there. Don't go any place. Do you understand?" But he hangs up.

I find him there: not as difficult as you might imagine. He's the only man in the whole of New York City who is standing so still right now. All around him is motion and light but he looks like someone who is in a dark, still place all of his own. He frightens me. I hold his arm and steer him towards the taxi. Instinctively I cover the back of his head as he folds himself into the back seat, just like packing a perp into a black and white. I give the driver my address and sit watching Goren, trying not to make my attention too obvious because I know it makes him squirm.

Unresisting, he lets me lead him upstairs. I park him in an armchair. He looks so dog tired I expect him to lay back in it and doze off like he sometimes does in the office - power napping, he calls it - what a crock! - but instead he sits pretty much upright, perching awkwardly on the front of the chair. I don't want to look at him. I make coffee, that faithful stopgap, instead. No more vending machine trash; this is the real McCoy. I put sugar in his.

I sit on the couch and drink my coffee. He drinks. It's almost amiable. But there is a white elephant in the room no one's talking about and we are both staying silent because we don't want to go there. The silence, the stillness - they're making me antsy.

I look at his shoes, playing a little game with myself - can I tell what he is thinking about just by watching his legs from the knee downwards? No, I can't. My eyes drift upwards.

Curiosity, that's all it is, I tell myself. But I can't stand it. I'm so tired of not listening to the all the questions I keep hearing. All the images, all the violence of my baby's birth and the terror being abducted, mixed up and mashed around. I'm desperate to do something to stop these flashbacks. But all there is is the stillness, the silence. Everyone has been concentrating so hard on Goren, on his problems, on his mother and his brother. I've been using what he is going through to distract me from what I am going through, but now I am too tired to procrastinate and evade any more. I need to do something drastic. Suddenly a whole bunch of things that used to seem so important to me seem irrelevant.

Without warning I lean over and kiss him on the mouth. I taste coffee, the sticky tang of sugar, and Goren's own personal scent. I have smelt him before of course but not in quite the same way as this. I really should stop. But I'm so curious. He stiffens, and protests.

"Eames what the hell are you doing?" His eyes are staring, more white visible than usual, just like a horse that's spooked. I don't know what I expected but I wasn't imagining he would be frightened of me. His lips curl away from his teeth. Disgust? I don't care. He tries to pull back and away from me but the chair stops him. I kiss him again. He doesn't want to touch me. Interesting. If he was really that freaked out he could simply push me away, couldn't he?

Thank God; he closes his eyes. I think ... he is giving in. Without warning his hands snap upwards and grab me by the head and then he is kissing me back with a real ferocity, it almost feels like desperation. Oh, well I can see your call and raise it by fifty, buddy. I shove him back into the chair and push against him, holding him still so I can be very thorough in my investigations - I'm a good cop, I have to find out, I need to know. No more talking Goren, no more cereal-box philosophy, no more picking apart the threads of other people's sad and tattered lives. It's just you and me now. I want to know you.

It's exciting. I know this man, but I don't know this side of him. I feel safe and terrified at the same time. There are terrible red marks across his chest and stomach where apparently he was secured to a table with chains - chains, for God's sake? I grind my teeth together when I see that. I am so incensed but there's nowhere for my anger to go, no one to lash out at except Goren. He's not especially gentle with me but then neither am I at the moment. I shove him around. I'm horrified by what they did to him and I'm also angry ... I want to yell at him and hit him - to punish him for what he has done to me and allowed to happen to himself; to get back at him for pulling me into the wasteland and the mess that is his life. I feel fury and fear all mixed up with trust and care and it is powerfully erotic. This certainly isn't love-making. He's just in my line of fire, that's all.

(I do yell, actually. Quite a lot. I hope my neighbour hears me. She's always alluding to my lack of male company. I'm sick of her pitying looks when I meet her outside. Especially after I went to the hospital in full labour and came home again 48 hours later, empty-handed.)

Afterwards? For perhaps half a minute Bobby (no. I have to still call him 'Goren') is tender and vulnerable, pushing his nose into my hair and inhaling deeply, as if trying to consume me in some way not already covered by the activity of the last half hour or so. He doesn't let go of me until my leg starts to cramp.

Then the bricks and mortar come straight back up - like watching the fall of the Berlin Wall in reverse. Well. What did I expect? He stands up and pulls his clothes back on.

"So did I finally satisfy your curiosity?" he says archly, buttoning his jeans. He looks at me for an answer but I don't trust myself to speak yet. His heavily lidded eyes regard me with a coldness that is such a contrast, it surprises me. I'm thrown by his question, and refuse to meet his gaze while I try and throw a smart answer together with the precious few ingredients I have left in my store cupboard. Looking at him would only provoke him more, I know that. In his present mood I don't think that's a good idea but .. maybe later.

But I don't see him again for three days.

**Captain Danny Ross's office, NYPD. The next day.**

**ROSS**: (reading) "Chronic but not cellular dehydration. Blood work shows evidence of venal use of sodium thiopental ('Sodium Pentathol; Truth Serum') and other barbiturates (orally?)"

Oh, my God. You read about this stuff, but you just don't ...

"External evidence of physical trauma to wrists, ankles, right inner elbow (excessive bruising - needle/shunt?), extensive bruising to solar plexus, knuckles of left hand ... presenting with symptoms of early-onset Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) ... additionally, already-present severe (not manic) depression ... upheaval in personal circumstances ... insomnia ... paranoia; some evidence of mild neurosis. Exacerbated by higher-than-average intelligence," Ha! Tell me about it!

I can't ever let him read this. I'd never hear the end of it.

No, I'm being too hard. He's an arrogant bastard but at least he's not pretentious about it.

Close my eyes and wish I had never given up smoking. I need a cigarette now. I'm up the creek without a canoe, let alone a paddle. So is Eames. Talk of the devil -

"Yes Detective. Any news of your partner .. ?"

**EAMES**: Why the hell does Ross always refer to him as my partner? That bugs me. The man has a name! I'll just remind him, shall I?

"Captain, I really think we should contact the Chief of D's about _Detective Goren's_ suspension."

"What are you talking about?"

"I just feel - " I hesitate. Oh, please. As if I really know what I feel right now. "I feel it would be better for Goren if he was here, even if it was only driving a desk for a while."

"You mean, so you can keep an eye on him?" Ross raises an eyebrow at me.

What's that supposed to mean. "Well, isn't that what you asked me to do?" I ask bluntly.

"I'm not sure it's appropriate, Detective. We need to see what the outcome of his disciplinary hearing is. He may not be coming back at all, for all we know. But leave it with me, I'll have a think about it."

I leave the captain's office and in spite of myself, heft a huge sigh. I feel a sudden pang thinking about Deakins. Everything looks colourless and dank, like a winter storm is brewing. The clock is stuck fast at 3.00pm. I catch myself. Never in my professional life have I been a clock-watcher. Not since high school history lessons! It's just so hard to think properly at the moment. I'm certain Ross was reading a medical report ... Bobby's?

To hell with it. More coffee, that's what I need. Why should I care if I lose my partner? I've had three of them before him, after all. I can stand losing Robert Goren. He's not the same man I partnered any more, anyway.

Without warning I'm hijacked, invaded by the memory of him pressing his nose into my hair. Inhaling. Breathing me in. He was sniffing me - sniffing me, dammit. In spite of myself I feel a distinct tugging sensation, low down. I was a physical wreck this morning. I needed 40 minutes in the shower and a protracted session praying to the Great Goddess Max Factor before I could haul my butt in here.

The invasive memory is nothing more than a throwback to the Bobby Goren of old, the one I like to think about at the moment, if I have to think about him at all. He used to sniff everything. Grossed me out on many occasions. Did it on purpose a lot, especially when I was pregnant. I admit, I wish he'd come back.

But I don't really think I'll ever see that man again.

**Detective Goren's Disciplinary Hearing. Three days later.**

**EAMES**: I listen in barely-disguised disbelief as Bobby says -

"Detective Eames is not in any way culpable sir - I bullied and coerced her into assisting me. For purely selfish reasons, and without due consideration to the compromising position it was placing her in."

A total bare-faced lie! Does Ross know? Is he looking at me to see my reaction? What happens if they ask me for my side of the story - do I go along with what Goren says? Perhaps I could say a few choice words about Bobby putting me in "compromising positions", but I don't think that would help anyone right now. The Chief of Detectives turns his attention to me. Here we go ...

"Very well, Goren, thanks for that." He puts on an official tone of voice that makes me want to sneer, were I not so scared at this point. "Detective Alexandra Eames, for your secondary role in this sorry affair, you are fined a week's pay and an official reprimand will be entered on your staff jacket, to remain in place for a minimum of 12 months."

"Yes, sir."

That's manageable, then.

"Detective Robert Goren, in light of your admission of guilt on the charge of gross insubordination, you are fined three week's pay and demoted to Detective Third Grade, effective immediately. In addition you are required to submit yourself for a full examination by the department's Psychological Services before resuming work. In any capacity."

Looking sidelong at Goren now, I watch his face from under my bangs. I don't dare let him see me looking because I know how he loves to have an audience, and it wouldn't take much right now to set him off - oh no, I don't believe it - he's laughing! His shoulders are shaking.

"Do you have any thing you wish to say Detective?"

Goren composes himself. With difficulty. "No - no sir. Thank you sir."

If it didn't mean standing on one leg and the risk of falling straight on my butt, I would kick him, I surely would.

We watch as the Chief of Detectives fusses with his paperwork and then hurries out the room, looking hugely relieved to be shot of us and the holy mess we've made. Case closed. I's dotted, T's crossed. Goren narrows his eyes, watching as Ross scampers after the boss like a puppy, totally in the guy's thrall since he was exonerated at a separate hearing yesterday.

Wearily I move out of the door and into the corridor. The afternoon sun is trying to gain access through a filthy window. The air smells like all municipal buildings everywhere in this city - of old linoleum, bleach and sweat. Someone, somewhere in New York City must owe me a drink. Who can I call?

"Come on, I'll drive you home," I say, but Goren stands still, looking at me with an unreadable expression, before gesturing to an empty waiting room. My glance says - "What are you up to?" but he just pushes me into the room with a hand on the small of my back. I sit down with a coffee table placed strategically in between us. He remains standing.

"You're angry with me," he says, tilting his head downwards and looking up at me. I call this the Lady Di look after I saw her do it to TV cameras a few times. He uses it to disarm you by making him appear more fragile than he really is; making you feel pity - making you believe that _he_ feels pity. It's especially effective on women. He forgets that after years of watching him work, I know his style better than he does. So I am perfectly able to ignore it when he lifts his eyebrows into some kind of visual question mark. "Is it really only me you're mad at?"

"No s, Sherlock," I say, too quickly, slithering haphazardly around his second question. "I couldn't believe that you were laughing in there. What is the matter with you?"

He ignores the insult, making me feel cheap. I admit it isn't up to my normal standard of witty repartee but then I think I can be forgiven, under the circumstances. "I was just relieved, that's all," he says. "I thought I was about to lose my badge altogether. You're mad at me," he says slowly, unfolding his arms and shaking them loosely by his side, "because of what you thought_you_ might lose for a minute back there."

I finally meet his gaze. He stands looking distinctly uncomfortable. He puts one hand out towards me, palm up, in a supplicatory gesture. "But Eames ... that wouldn't be so bad, would it? I mean, in the past ... well, you've already lost so much. And you've coped perfectly fine. You can handle it better than most people I know. It's almost a speciality with you."

Deliberately, I purse my lips to stop from shouting at him. No way am I going to allow him to draw me out. Not that that will stop him trying. He's like a dog with a bone. "Like ... when your father was caught defrauding the police pensions fund?" he says. "That was a loss. A loss of face. A blow to your pride as well as to your father's. A loss of money. What was it - fifty thousand bucks? And ... and you had to pay it all back. In the mid-1980s that was a lot of money, Eames. How many extra shifts did you pull to help him make up for it? How did your family afford to care for your mother? What did you have to give up to make it work?"

Goren appears to lose his train of thought for a moment, gets distracted. He frowns. "I was about to say that I couldn't possibly imagine what that must have felt like for you. But actually, I can."

Well at least he's being honest now. And the focus is off me, which suits me just fine, thanks. He pulls off his tie clip and slides his tie out from round his neck, loosening a couple of buttons. With maddening slowness he rolls the tie and puts it on the table.

"Then, you lost your husband, of course ... ended up trying to take a new direction in a new department, and then getting lumbered with me. The station whack job." He grins, but the sentiment on his lips never gets up as far as his eyes. I suspect that label hurts him a lot more than he ever lets on. He tries to use it to his advantage, instead. "Slowly but surely your chances of promotion are lost to you. Especially after today."

"I told you that wasn't important."

"No? How 'bout the money? You're telling me you wouldn't like to be able to move nearer to your sister, be able to buy better presents for her kid? Oh - yes - that was another loss, of course, The baby."

Oh, God. Please Bobby, no. Don't do this. I can't stop him, though. This next bit is going to be like the encounter in my apartment ... just something that happens, just something that has to happen. I fiddle with my car keys and examine a faint white ring on the table, wondering if it was coffee or tea that made it.

"Maybe losing the child wasn't such a big deal? I mean - he was never yours in the first place ... you always knew that, didn't you. It was just a ... just a human being that started life inside your body, that's all. The pain and damage that you went through to give birth was all part of the deal, wasn't it? How many pints of blood did you lose that night? Was it three?"

OK: that's it. "Back off, Goren." Oh, I know only too well where he is headed with this. I stand up abruptly, making the chair rattle behind my knees. I don't even want to be in the same room with him now, but he takes my request literally and backs himself over to the door. Is he scared of me? He folds his arms again defensively and cocks his head. Then he waits. I have to control my rising sense of panic. Not easy, on four hours' sleep. I was fretting so much about today. Briefly I consider drawing my weapon and shooting him in the foot or something.

"Ahh, yes. I remember now." he says suddenly, regaining his stride. He pushes himself away from the wall. "You said 'back off' just now. That lit a light bulb in my head. I bet ... I bet you started getting mad at me when I wouldn't let you help me with my family situation! Sheesh, you've been carrying that around a long time, Eames."

Normally this is right about the time when he moves in towards the person he is working on, physically invading their personal space in order to increase their discomfort. He must guess that I am on to him though, because he stays put. He stands unusually still. Reversing the psychology. When did our relationship get so complicated?

"Oh - I nearly forgot - you lost your liberty, too; coulda lost your life - and coped with that. This whole time you've fought the good fight and consistently coped with everything life throws at you, Alex."

Can't help myself - have to look up at him. He almost never calls me by my given name. I scrutinise his face and have to make myself remember that this is a confrontational situation. He appears genuinely concerned, but I can't let myself be fooled by that. He'll use any expression, any gesture, any ploy, in order to prove his point.

"You've 'coped' with it all so well. But you're angry with me because ... because I haven't coped. Doesn't that make you sick? I haven't coped with my losses _at all_. I'm getting a lot of attention - most of it negative - because of that. You're mad at me because you are playing by all the rules of how a cop is supposed to deal with this kind of stuff, and your distress is being overlooked - "

"No! That's not true. This isn't about ME, Bobby. This is all about you. I had the counselling, remember? You're trying to re-draw the picture - "

"No, I'm not. This isn't another one of my little games, as you call them." His voice rises slightly. He's angry now. "This is all about how everyone in New York City seems to know that Detective Robert Goren, third class, lost his childhood and his parents and his family and his liberty and his career and his control. Control, that's what this is about - that's what it has always been about, Eames."

He stops. I have to remind myself to breathe again. Now it is his turn to avoid my gaze, and his eyes flicker evasively all over the room. I don't think he actually meant to lose his temper just then. I feel a subtle shift in the emphasis between us. His voice when he speaks again is very, very quiet.

"I have to tell myself that, in order to make sense of what happened in your apartment the other night. I tell myself you were just trying to get me back into a place where I felt capable and in control again. You saw me at my very worst. Your expression when you saw the marks on my arms - you knew what that experience had felt like. Didn't you."

**GOREN**: That wasn't a question. I have to stop now. My voice is suddenly not reliable any more. I watch her face - normally so well controlled; God, how I admire that in her - as it begins to dismantle itself. She's crying in utter silence, now. It's a terrible sight. I did this!

I had to do this. I need to get Eames - the old, well defended, effective Eames - back. I had to provoke her, let her see that I understood why she seduced me. But this is horrible.

Crossing the room, I fumble in my pocket for a handkerchief and rest my other hand on her shoulder. She blows her nose expressively and I make a point of not taking the handkerchief back again. But I don't take my hand away, either. I sit on the coffee table instead. Now we're finally at the same level - emotionally as well as physically. I feel as though I am granted permission to look her in the eye again. I've earned that right. I think we both needed reminding that we have a lot in common, bad things, things that we can use to hold us together.

I can smell citrus, sandalwood - maybe lemon balm. Is it lemon balm? Before I realise exactly what I am doing - it's been a long day, after all - I have leant over slightly, bathing my face in her hair and am inhaling deeply.

"Dammit Goren quit sniffing my hair!" She pushes me away and wipes her eyes with the heel of her palm.

Oh, look. I think the old Eames just came back.

**EAMES**: Something felt like it clicked just a moment ago. I dislocated my shoulder when I was 10 years old falling off my new Schwinn, and my father grabbed my arm and twisted it back into the socket. Boy, did I scream. I hate crying. But I have to admit I do feel a bit more relaxed now. I understand what Goren was doing. He was twisting my arm back into the socket. I feel exhausted. Am I safe to drive?

"Are we done here? Can we go now?" I implore him, jangling car keys. But I am talking as much about our relationship - professional as well as personal - as I am about driving home through New York traffic.

"Ah - no. I'll ... I'll walk home." He pulls a battered cell phone from another pocket. I don't recognise it. "I could use some air."

I look quizzically at him and the phone. "Oh - I've just got something I need to do ..." he says simply.


	2. Chapter 2

Grateful thanks for all the positive comments on "Eames Gets To Drive"

Even if you aren't into the shippy stuff, please read this anyhow and _tell me what you think of the writing_

**Title:** Apropo of Nothing  
**Pairing:** Goren/Eames  
**Spoilers:** After _Untethered_. Follows on from "Eames Gets To Drive", a week or so after Goren's suspension.  
**Rating:** PG-13 - "Adults doing adult-y things", as someone said.  
**Disclaimer:** These characters do not belong to me.  
**Summary:**I got tired of writing in the first person so I have gone back to being a reporter.

Eames is crawling; naked, broken and bloody, through a pile of paperwork - forms, folders, books, articles, magazines. She knows the answer to making this case watertight is in here - she's seen it already, but she can't remember where. The effort, which can only be seen slightly by the outside world, is agonizing.

She misses Goren's peculiar analytical skills so much now, and knowing that irritates her even more that the paperwork. Why did that idiot go and get himself suspended she thinks, before she can stop herself.

The telephone rings. She glances up at it, and realises that it hasn't rung for a long time - it's always been her, making outgoing calls. A small light blinks insistently. A direct call from outside the building. She picks it up, a little warily and a more than a little wearily.

"Major Case - Detective Eames."

"Eames. Thank God. I need you to give me something to do."

"I can think of so many responses to that - "

"No, really. I'm going out of my gourd here. Please, give me something to do."

Bobby Goren does not often say please. Eames turns this over in her mind like a child playing with a smooth pebble in her mouth. Normally Goren is such a confident self-starter that taking any kind of instruction is alien to him. But without the sure patterns of police investigative life, perhaps he's having problems adjusting. God help him when he actually gets to retirement age. If he gets to retirement age.

An idea pops into Eames's head.

"OK. Listen, I need you to go to the library for me - "

She wonders: Can you actually hear someone grin over the telephone? Does she imagine it, or can she hear the muscles in his cheeks cracking and complaining angrily after weeks of neglect?

"What do you want me to find out?" he says.

She needs to think of something, quickly, but can't - and anyway, Ross is giving her the eye of doom through the glass walls of his office - damn, does he never pull the blinds in there? "Start making your way to Fifth Avenue, and I'll send you a text in about 15 minutes. I'll see you there, later. Gotta go now."

This time, he laughs. She'd forgotten how that sounded. It's nice. He hangs up without saying goodbye. Superfluous, time-wasting social nicety. Why bother? That's_so_ Bobby Goren.

Eames head butts her way through the rest of the paperwork like a billy-goat chasing tail, pausing only once, to send a text message to Goren's phone.

-oOOo-

Goren takes the steps to the grand entrance of the New York Public Library in Fifth Avenue three at a time, but is halted suddenly by the incoming text alert on his phone. He flips it, reads it, frowns _"Go to the Library you'll know what to look for when u get there."_

-oOOo-

After covering a lot of ground and looking at a lot of shelves (Eames decides that you really need bloodhounds to discover someone in a building this size) she finds him in one of the reference sections. He comes over, bends over, brushes his lips across hers as though he does so every day of their lives. Only once has he kissed her like that, as she was leaving his mother's funeral.

Normally Eames doesn't get much more out of him than a cup of tepid coffee and a "Hi how ya doing." What's she supposed to do with this? From a man who doesn't even say goodbye before putting the phone down?

Goren sees the perturbation on her face and enjoys it. Eames motions to an unoccupied reading table. Moving on. Perhaps that didn't just happen, after all.

"So ... what did you find that's new?" she asks him, permitting her lips a smile almost as fleeting as his kiss. Damn it, now he's making me feel playful, she thinks.

His gaze sizes her up for a moment before he hefts an enormous book, the size of it is so perfectly suited to him - both physically and intellectually - and opens it to a bookmarked page. She thinks it must be The Encyclopaedia of Everything You Can Possibly Think Of, or something. The text message seems to have done the trick, giving him carte blanche to follow his own interests and instincts for a while. He's been lost in here, wandering around happily, for three hours; his eyes are bright and his face animated.

"Look at this - " he says, and then launches into nearly half an hour of telling Eames what he has been reading, what he has learnt, what he has deduced from that, how it connects to the other. It is all apropos of nothing in particular. Lesser beings might crumble after ten minutes of this but she realises - to her shock, for at least the second time today - how much she's missed it.

Goren's voice grows wings and begins to fly somewhere over her very, very tired head, all the higher tones being absorbed by the ages of cardboard and paper and leather in the shelves around them. It starts to feel to Eames that the green-shaded reading lamp on the table is the only light left in the world, in the universe; it is illuminating Goren's fingers - pale and far too elegant, really - as they fondle and play with the pages of his books.

"You're done in. I'll stop."

"What?"

"You look tired. And perhaps hungry."

Without further preamble he stands up and closes the books; begins replacing them in shelves around him, his aim sure and certain, coming with practiced ease. The largest book - the Encyclopaedia - he saves till last. "This belongs over there."

She follows him, unwilling to be left alone in the unusual silence. She drifts in the wake left by his voice in the sea of her head.

Not without some effort, Goren replaces the book on a shelf just above his head. He doesn't hear her behind him and when he turns, is surprised. She is in his space again. Does he mind? He decides not. As she makes a move to turn away, he puts his palm on the spine of a book behind her shoulder, preventing her.

He kisses her; but not a kiss exactly - there is not enough pressure his lips for that - more of a question mark. A lock of her hair makes a valiant bid for freedom and he uses one of his pale and far too elegant fingers to push it back behind her ear. His fingers stay there, massaging very gently into the back of her neck, which he finds to be knotted and wrangled from a whole day sat shuffling paper at her desk.

This has the required effect. Her head falls slowly backwards into his palm. He kisses her everywhere on her face and neck, except on her mouth. That he leaves open, so he can hear her when she gasps.

There is a sudden rapping noise - arthritic knuckles and paste diamonds on hardwood shelving. They freeze like teenagers caught smoking behind the bike sheds. It is The Librarian, an imposing woman in her late fifties, standing at the end of the reference shelves. Her arms are folded across her ample bosom and a disapproving frown is pasted on her face like a bad wallpapering job ... all she would need is long grey hair gathered in a bun and cat-eyed spectacles on a chain and the image would be perfect.

Eames tries not to laugh, fails, stifles the sound in her partner's chest.

"Well REALLY, Mr Goren!" says the woman. She knows him. Goren steps away, looks suitably contrite, and Eames laughs again.

The Librarian leaves.

-oOOo-

Later, Goren is kissing her again ... she is mercurial, her skin sliding beneath his hands like little silver-bellied fishes in a shallow brook. After all those years working in the Vice Squad, she isn't shocked by what he is doing, only surprised that it excites her so much. He kisses her everywhere except her mouth, which he leaves open so he can hear her gasp, and he smiles when she says "Well REALLY, Mr Goren!" just before she comes.


	3. Chapter 3

-1**Title**: The Question of Decent Coffee.  
**Author**: Lozzie  
**Pairing**: Goren/Eames  
**Spoilers**: After Untethered. Follows on from "Apropos of Nothing", a week or so after Goren's suspension.  
**Rating**: PG-13 - There's a swear word in there and the theme is a bit adult.  
**Disclaimer**: These characters do not belong to me.  
**Note**: I've only been to New York City once, and that was only for one afternoon and evening. So my ideas about what the city is like in early morning are based more on London than New York

Apologies also for the rushed ending, but I wanted to get this done before LOCI started airing again.

Eames woke horrifyingly early the next morning. She was cold; not used to sleeping naked much, since Joe had died.

Goren? He was also gone. His absence was almost as impressive as when he was actually there, and Eames felt acutely lonely for a moment before forcing herself out of bed and into the kitchen for coffee.

His not being there was a message, one she understood perfectly - only real lovers spend the night together and wake tangled in each other's arms and legs - only lovers do obvious, ordinary, physical things together. And they were not lovers. Just two adult friends offering each other a little comfort in the midst of a city that seemed to want to hurt them. Suddenly she understood the question his lips had been asking as they brushed against hers in the library last night - _"Can we try this again, just once? I don't want to be left with the memory of what it was like last time. I think I can do better."_

He had done better. In spite of herself, she felt sordid. She and Goren are very probably just using one another. She could tell from the way the tension came snapping out of her, how hungry she was for that simple release. She had been like a whip cracked repeatedly, over and over again.

Eames was brooding on all this at roughly the same time Goren finally arrived back in his own neighbourhood. The sun was thinking about getting out of bed, but wasn't enthusiastic about the idea. Goren had walked the seven miles across town or, rather, he had meandered here, following his own haphazard path. He walked like a river wending its way through a flood plain, only delaying the inevitable egress into the sea.

Saturday morning in New York City. He walked past alleyways heavy with garbage, looking on the point of giving birth to something foetid. He listened to the rising muddy swell of traffic crossing the river like a tide (sometimes Goren liked to think he could hear sounds in colour) and, as dawn rose the light changed like at the end of a show.

Looking at the sun's pathetic efforts to rouse itself, he felt sympathy with it. In fact, the only thing between himself and a lingering death right then was a cup of strong, milky coffee. He stepped into a little Italian shop he liked. There were lots of those in New York.

It was her weekend off, but Eames was still on call. She switched on her cell phone, oblivious to its cheerful greeting. She caught herself looking at the screen to see if there was a message from Goren. Ha! Of course there wasn't. She dumped coffee grounds into the paper filter with one hand whilst texting him with the other _did u get hm ok_ - deliberately using the abbreviations that irritated him so much and grinning at the knowledge of it. The boiling water was just starting to gurgle and drip through the coffee machine when she received his reply, _Walking. Nearly there._

Good grief: Had he been walking all night? Why didn't he take a cab? Eames frowned, pursing her lips against the scalding coffee. There was a lot he was not telling her. For example: about The Mystery Phone (as she subconsciously labelled it); about his continuing battle with insomnia; about his visits with the departmental psychologist. But of course, those are the very things that lovers would talk to each other about ... over drinks in a bar after work, or with limbs woven together on a sofa somewhere, filling in the commercial breaks that are littered throughout the Friday Nite Movie Show on channel five.

Nothing so conventional for him and her.

Eames frowned even harder at her coffee and poured it away down the sink, watching the smoky liquid swirl and vanish. That's got to be a metaphor for something, she thought. Perfectly good coffee being discarded, wasted.

She wandered aimlessly into another room. Everything felt wrong. She imagined she was being held against her will by memories and emotions and, for once in her life, she allowed herself the luxury of confronting them.

Tiny signs of his presence were there - her trained eyes noticed that he'd put her shoes together neatly by the sofa. Human beings find it hard to move through any environment without leaving at least some trace of themselves.

Knowing this, Eames went dusting for Goren's prints on her heart, but got only partial matches.

Standing outside the Italian cafe, Goren drank mocha cappuccino from a waxy cardboard cup and ruefully thought of how the coffee that Eames occasionally brought him always tasted so damn good, so much better than this. He poured the rest of it into the metal grill of a storm drain, seeing it mix with the dust and detritus of the city street. That has to be a metaphor for something, he thought. Coffee that is not as good as Eames's. He scratched at his wrist and pulled off his watch, placing it in a pocket. He knew the itching was nothing more than a psychosomatic reaction to his not being able to bear the feel of things around his wrists, but he gave in to it anyway.

Eames was still sitting motionless on her couch, trying to figure out what was supposed to happen next in the murder/mystery/suspense of her life. A trained detective shouldn't find it so hard to figure this out, she thought. I do this stuff for a living! But once again she was stymied by Goren's absence - her head was full of questions that he would normally help her answer, were they at work together.

Fact one: They were not intimate in the traditional sense. She didn't know which side of the bed he slept on, or what breakfast cereal he ate. She'd never brushed her teeth at the sink where he was shaving (when he shaved, that is). Off the top of her head she couldn't remember his exact age, or even his birthday without looking it up somewhere. She could remember essential facts like his blood type, coffee preferences, family members, date of firearms licence renewal (three weeks after hers) and his home address ... but not even his phone number. That was programmed into her NYPD-issue cell phone (but not her personal one) and instantly forgotten.

That's just not right, she thought.

Goren walked into his bedroom, as tiredness made inroads and captured more ground in the landscape of his mind. He began peeling off layers of clothing. Each layer seemed to have trapped the essence of places he had been recently. He could smell the library, the city streets, the coffee shop and, as he got down to the final layer - his own skin - he could smell _her_. He was arrested by that. He'd called her by a pronoun instead of by her name. Somehow he was finding it difficult to equate the woman he had sex with last night with the name "Eames" ... or even with "Alex".

Everything felt wrong.

Goren looked critically at his wrists. Although the injuries caused by the restraints at Tates had long since healed, but the evidence of much deeper injury was still there. The skin was raw and broken. That's what happens when you don't leave injuries alone to heal, he thought. They carry on hurting you.

The shower did its level best to try and soothe his nerves, but the melancholy persisted even as he lathered the soap over his chest and down his legs, slowly but surely wiping his body clean of 'her', as if he were trying to disguise a terrible misdemeanour. He laughed at the image of his own body draped with yellow and black 'Crime scene - do not cross!' tape. But there was a grain of truth in what he was laughing at. I worked so hard, he thought, reaching for the shampoo bottle, to get the old Eames back - to get us back on track after all the shit we've been wading through. And now, in a couple of moments of stupid weakness - now I've turned Eames into something else. Into "her."

"No, see - " he said to himself, unconsciously mimicking her idiom and inflection. "This is all wrong. I don't want things like this. I want to get back to _normal._"

And if he was crying in the shower it was because he had shampoo in his eyes, nothing more. That's all it was.

They were standing together outside the main entrance to One Police Plaza. The weak winter sun was bright but cold, and the frosted sky was the colour of very old and once-white underwear, washed with the dark colours too often.

Goren was dressed in a suit and tie, his cheeks pink and freshly shaved. His hair, which had grown a bit, was covered by a knit cap, and he was hugging his familiar leather binder to his chest with both arms, as if hoping it would keep him warm. The image he presented to her was familiar and, Eames realised, comforting.

"You know we - ", "Bobby, I need to -" They both began talking at the same time and then stopped. And, looking her, Goren realised suddenly that nothing more really needed to be said - he could see from her eyes and from the set of her jaw what was going through her head. She wanted it finished.

Seven years of working together had given him the ability to read his partner's face and collect clues to what she was thinking (and, sometimes, feeling). Seven years. He could even tell that she was doing the same thing - taking in his clothes, staring at his forearms where they were crossed over his chest. His arms were saying to her "We have to stop now" and his eyes were saying "Sorry - "

Eames smiled fleetingly. She loved how he 'got' her. She'd been missing that. 


End file.
